No progress had any meaning in absolute terms unless it was evenly dispersed and no one in the country lagged behind to harvest it in cogent form. Disparity among the sections in owning and sharing the facilities and benefits emanating from the developmental projects and various utility schemes sponsored by the Government, often becomes the cause of social unrest. Social revolution to aspire for class less society, of course in economic sense, meant freedom from any type of denial of opportunity, if not from exploitations in Marxian sense. Why should each household in our country not own a TV set is an important question in as much as owning other things emanating from the developmental revolution which has an ultimate goal of reaching to each and every person or in the words of the Prime Minister, “standing on the last paidan (footrest)”.
There are as many as 25 crore households in India but the collected data reveals that only 18 crores own a TV set. How many households own more than one is, however, precisely not known but conservative estimates would put it at nearly 10 percent. Being elementary indicators of economic standing, a TV, a refrigerator and a vehicle owned by a household carry a lot of sense. Admittedly, six basic needs that of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education and livelihood were to proceed in importance and preference to owning TV sets. This simple disparity of one basic economic indicator for whatever reasons means spreading of economic prosperity in inadequate measure creating classes of the less privileged. That is to be addressed and resolved which should be the concern of the Government in power. Perhaps, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar, conscious of this fact, declared in Srinagar on 22nd instant that India would soon become the largest country in the world where every household owned a television set. The matter does not end here, to have a TV set means ancillary facilities and access to them like electricity, Dish TV set top boxes and the ‘catching ranges’ of the nearest telecasting houses. Just for providing one facility like a TV set, which is now more or less a necessity than a luxury, a series of economic measures needed to be roped in, which prima facie, looking to be easily managed are in fact not so.
Just see after how long, it dawned upon the Government that there were many villages and localities near and along the International Border and the Line of Control where even though most of the households owned TV sets but they could not watch programmes telecast from our Doordarshan channels and had to watch only the stuff telecast from across the border which usually comprises propaganda and ill will against our country as the so called programmes were full of hate, religious bigotry and falsehood. It was the occasion of free distribution of such set top boxes where the Union Minister made these observations. The need of the hour is to make DD Jammu and DD Kashir telecast not only more interesting and informative programmes including news items but their duration in the evening and in the morning extended. In 1970s Doordarshan used to be the only channel and there was no choice other than watching it. Now there is mushrooming growth of TV Channels, nearly at present more than 700 active, 24×7 nonstop and these two regional Doordarshan centres have to be competitive in their beaming material to attract maximum viewing which in turn could make them going in for commercial pursuits by earning maximum revenue on advertisements.
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